Muppet Airlines

MOONPIE:  Let's play airplane!

SOPER: O.K.  (Settles onto the bed behind Moonpie)

MOONPIE:  (proffering a doll baby bottle) Would you like some juice?

SOPER:  Yes please.  And some pretzels.

MOONPIE: We don't have pretzels.

SOPER:  What!?  I paid 350 dollars for this ticket, and you don't even have pretzels!

MOONPIE: Here, here, here are some pretzels.

SOPER:  Yeah, I knew you were hording them for first class.  First class always gets everything. Grumble grumble grumble.

MOONPIE: And now I will have a drink before we fly.

SOPER:  You can't drink! You are the pilot!

MOONPIE: But I'm thirsty!

SOPER:  But you are the pilot!  Pilots can't drink before they fly!

MOONPIE:  I want some juice!

SOPER:  O.k., just don't put anything in it.

MOONPIE:  (drinks her pretend juice)  O.k., we can fly now.  Kitty wants to fly, too.

SOPER:  Kitty is going to be your co-pilot?  I knew I shouldn't have booked a flight on Muppet Airlines...

**********************

I'm still struggling what to think about the human trafficking/international adoption issue.  I know corruption is endemic any time a business becomes lucrative -- and adoption is a business, despite what we desperately all want to think.

When D and I were weighing our options for a second child, we hugged Moonpie to us and thanked God that we knew her story.  That we knew for certain  she had truly been released by her family's free will, that we would never have to look her in the eye and say "well, yes, you might have been kidnapped/bought/conceived for cash, we'll probably never know." 

We also knew that we couldn't take the risk of not being able to give the same assurance to our second child.

Domestic adoption can be equally ethically involute.   Some women are pressured to place their child.  Some really are lied to, threatened, put into emotional situations you would never want for your daughter, sister, or friend.  Some women deeply regret their decision, and spend a lifetime carrying the guilt and the pain.  I know all this.  I worry about this.  I worry about the woman who is, somewhere, carrying a child I will someday call my own.  I worry for the family who will lose their connection to that child, no matter how open our adoption may be, no matter how well-intentioned and fastidious we may be.

I know this adoption will never be ethically perfect.  I know there are some who say that adoption can never be ethically perfect.  Those who believe the biological family should be given more help to raise the child, that D and I are less than even the second/third/fifth choice for a child.   Someday I will have to look an adolescent in the eye and admit  "Yes, your first mother might have been able to raise you if her circumstances had changed.  She would have raised you if her circumstances had changed.  She loved you.  She wanted you.  She gave you life."

But I will know, in my heart,  that I did too.  And that I have done everything in my power to make sure the other family knew of every option available to them, carefully considered each of them, then made the adoption decision of their own free-will.

This is your Captain speaking.  We have reports that there is turbulence ahead, so please return to your seats, fasten your seatbelts, and remain seated until the fasten seatbelt sign is turned off....

Comments

[Ruta]

Soper, if you haven't already done so, please check out Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform (PEAR) -- http://www.pear-now.org/ It's a group of adoptive parents, both domestic and int'l, addressing these very ethical issues you're concerned about. We're trying to get involved in the process and make a difference. And we sure could use the help.

[Nan]

I read the previous post and was mulling it. Later that day, I picked N up at day care and arrived a few minutes early. They (the +/- 2yo crowd) were having music time, so I didn't want to interrupt. N was sitting on his teacher's lap. He smiled when I came in, but didn't get up. Then one of the other little boys had a fright of some sort. N got up off the teacher's lap, ran over and gave his friend a hug, then came and hugged me.

I REALLY pray that the story we were given about his first mom is true, that I can look him in the eye and tell him that story and never worry. But I do - especially on days when I see what a wonderful person he's becoming.

[JEN/Chew]

Delurking to say there's a great article written by Elizabeth Larsen, an adoptive parent, in Mother Jones, and reprinted in the LA Times. I met her at an adoption ethics conference. She is articulate and sensitive to all sides of the triad. She addresses many of the things you address here: the moral inventory that is now plaguing the IA community. Thanks for talking about this. Reform begins with us, the "consumers".
http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/11/did-i-steal-my-daughter.html